Posted on 05/31/2011 5:27:35 AM PDT by wendy1946
Basically, I have about a baker's dozen issues with Republicans and Conservatives while pretty much everything dems and libtards ever do is some sort of an issue. The question of money theory and banking is one of the issues I have with conservatives; the evidence indicates they generally don't understand it.
Ellen Brown is not exactly one of us. Like Sarah Palin she is a populist but populism is roughly orthoganal to the question of liberal or conservative, Eva Peron and Sarah Palin are/were both populists. On a 180-degree scale for populists with Palin to the right at 180 degrees and Eva Peron at zero degrees on the left, Ellen Brown would be about ten or twelve degrees on the side towards Eva. Ellen Brown is the author of Web of Debt, which is the most intelligent book I've ever come upon dealing with the history and nature of money.
Her website, webofdebt.com has a blog section and the most recent article there involves the debt ceiling and conservatives would do well to read it. Brown is not advocating going on with our present money system. What she IS saying is that our money system needs to be fundamentally overhauled, and that half measures won't cut it and that, in particular, forcing a default on US debt by insisting on the present debt ceiling could have unintended consequences as bad or worse than the global depression of the 1930s.
The thing which too many conservatives do not seem to get is that our (present) money system is entirely based on federal debt and that there is no other basis for money at the present time. Alexander Hamilton described this:
"It is a well known fact that in countries in which the national debt is properly funded and an object of established confidence, it answers most of the purposes of money. Transfers of stock of public debt are there equivalent to payments in specie; or in other words, stock, in the principal transactions of business, passes current as specie. The same thing would in all probability happen here [if the federal government issued debt], under the like circumstances."
Ellen Brown notes that:
We now know that a government can go quite far into debt without a dangerous level of price inflation occurring much farther than the U.S. has gone today. Besides World War II, when U.S. debt was 120% of GDP, there is the remarkable example of Japan. Japan has retained its status as the worlds third largest economy, although it has a debt to GDP ratio of 226% and it is still fighting deflation.
Whether this idea of public debt as a basis for money is reasonable going into the future is highly debatable; Ellen Brown and others advocate changing the system fundamentally. BUT AS LONG AS PUBLIC DEBT REMAINS THE BASIS FOR MONEY, then locking any one debt ceiling forever means locking your money supply into that year's reality. You'd better hope that your economy never grows past that point.
B.s.
LLS
Your quarrel is with the people who set up the Fed and the income tax in 1913 (i.e. with the people who established our present system of money), not with me. I’m just trying to describe how things ARE, not how they should be. As things ARE, this debt ceiling game is dangerous.
* Sarah Palin is not a populist. She is a Conservative who is popular.
* The word is spelled 'orthogonal'
* Money differs from currency in that money must be a store of value. Therefore only Gold and Silver are true money.
* Everything else that pretends to be money is in fact some form of IOU. This is why Gold and Silver are the only legal forms of money according to the Constitution. Letters of credit such as today's non-Gold-backed FRN (Federal Reserve Note, also known as the dollar) are explicitly unconstitutional.
* There was a Supreme Court case in 1884: Julliard vs. Greenman: where the decision gave the Federal government justification to create a fiat currency. Since this decision went unchallenged it is now considered settled law - despite the fact that it is in direct conflict with the Constitution which forbids States from using anything except Gold and Silver as legal tender. This decision effectively made new constitutional law out of nothing.
* Alexander Hamilton was an interventionist and a protectionist: yet he certainly did not believe in nor did he advocate perpetual debt as the foundation of a currency supply.
* Fiat is the money currency of slaves. After the great devaluation (sometime later this year) everyone in America will know this. Buy Gold and Silver. Your liberty depends upon it.
There is no reason in the world to pump money out like toilet paper to create more money - forced inflation. If there were a fixed suppy of cash, it would simply deflate with tme as the economy grew which is a good thing.
LLS
Where do you find that? Art 1, Sect 8 says (US) Congress can coin Money, but makes no mention of from what. Art 1, Sect 10 addresses bills of credit and non-gold/silver based payments, but begins with "No STATE shall".
HE WHO GETS ROLLED GET PRIMARIED!
The problem (particularly with gold): The value of the stuff is totally based on psychology and psychiatry and not on economics or physics.
There is no practical use for the stuff. Nobody makes tooth fillings out of it anymore and there are cheaper and better metals for electrical contacts and bracelets. Oh, yeah, wait a minute, there IS in fact one potential use for gold for which nothing else would do as well. Half again denser than lead, soft, and totally inert, it would be the perfect metal for waterfowl shot. You could kill ducks and geese all day long with 2.75" shells and #7 shot.
Trying to base money on gold or silver caused gigantic grief all during the 1700s and 1800s and into the 1900s before the idea was finally abandoned prior to WW-II.
Nonetheless that is precisely how our present system works and how it was in fact intended to work. What Ellen Brown is saying is, if you're going to change the system change it, but don't screw around and start another global depression.
LLS
I wasn’t aware they were still doing that, nonetheless the value of the stuff is not based on any actual usage, if it were the stuff would be very much cheaper than it is. It’s value is based on psychology and psychiatry.
Fiat currency is a currency that a government has declared to be legal tender despite the fact that it has no intrinsic value and is not backed by reserves. Fiat money is soley based on faith. As in “The full faith and credit of the US govt”.
The thing that kills fiat currency is hyperinflation. As the US government continues to increase our debt and print (Devalue) more of our fiat currency, inflation increases until finally it kills the currency altogether. Every fiat currency ever introduced since the beginning of civilization has failed. Ours will also fail and increasing the debt will just hasten its demise.
Buy fractional gold and silver.
We are still in a deflationary spiral with the three areas that everybody sees standing out as anomalies i.e. food, fuel, and medical care. Food and fuel are going up due to speculation and hot money looking for ways to park itself and medicine is being affected by Bork Obunga's machinations.
Bankers and pols fear deflation a great deal more than inflation since they have vastly less control over it.
The world consumption of new gold produced is about 50% in jewelry, 40% in investments, and 10% in industry.[2]
One other source I saw claimed more like 75% of current production going to jewelry. Again that says that the value of the stuff has little or nothing to do with real uses and I view it as a mistake to be buying it at this time.
We need to accept the deflationary depression and get past it. Prices and wages will fall until they reach a point of market support. it is the only way we will get rid of the inventory of real estate and get the economy back on track. Moving toward the type of Jimmy Carter inflation we had in 1982 is not going to be any more pleasant or solve the issues.
The honest fact is that it does not matter what the Congress does this train is so far down the track and we are also now in the beginnings of a global depression that a financial crash is not avoidable. We are going to have to face it one way or the other. Facing it now by refusing to raise the debt limit will be better than kicking it down the road for another 2-3 years. Its going to be very bad. People who have realized this are preparing themselves to be independent for a year or two to get through what is going to be a terrible situation.
Like I said, pols and bankers and fed weenies all fear deflation much more than they fear inflation since they have so little in the way of tools to control it. Consider ordering a copy of Ellen Brown’s book, www.webofdebt.com.
They won’t be able to control whats coming and Bernanke knows it. He is just trying to string it out as long as possible before we actually crash. It will be much worse then. If we had just faced the music in 2008 instead of passing TARP we would be starting to climb out by now.
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